


swallow back that fear

by softsmilesandbrokenhearts



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Boys In Love, Canon Compliant, Introspection, M/M, POV Outsider, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-21
Updated: 2021-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-29 02:27:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30149337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softsmilesandbrokenhearts/pseuds/softsmilesandbrokenhearts
Summary: Men don’t sleep with other men. And yet.And yet Paul is (maybe) in love with a man, and Jim has never seen Paul laugh the way he does with John. And John is a parentless child (god bless Mimi), who found family in a boy who had everything John never had. They complete each other, and Jim shouldn’t care that it’s queer, or illegal and yet.Old habits die hard.Or, Jim has known for a while, but it takes a few more moments to accept it all.
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 34
Kudos: 73





	swallow back that fear

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by those fics where cynthia finds out, or john tells her. idk i just love when jp get caught or admit to be ~in love~ lmao
> 
> no disrespect intended

Jim McCartney has great pride in his ability to compartmentalize. A man built from too much war, too little happiness. He is of a generation that has seen too much to return to normal, and so they go around in the day time putting on brave faces, cowering in the shadows of their houses at night. 

So bad stuff happens. And Jim takes it on with a polite smile, and carefully concealed clenched fists. He teaches his sons to keep a straight face, and that the ugly things that lie inside you should stay there. Losing job and his wife didn’t kill him, so he doubts anything else could. He teaches his sons to be brave, and ignores all the well meaning wives that point out what a lack of a mother does to a boy.

He misses Mary like one misses the ocean breeze. Brilliant and beautiful, and there until you need it the most. Jim can survive without Mary, but those simple joys from life are gone. 

He didn’t choose this, but it happened, and so life goes.

So perhaps this is why he is so shocked. Or rather so frustrated at that part of himself that knew, deep down that something was off.

When he gets home that evening, after a long day of work and annoying coworkers, an aching headache from a drink too many, he is ready for bed. It’s eerily dark when he enters the house, and when he doesn’t see Mike lounging on the couch he figures he must be at the Roberts for the night. He can’t help the sigh that escapes him, and he peers into the kitchen, deciding if making dinner this late is worth it.

He decides against it, and plans an early morning breakfast, maybe Paul can help. As his thoughts turn towards his eldest son, they get a bit darker.

He loves the boy with all that’s in him, and Paul truly is his mother’s son, sweet and polite, with those doe eyes that make everyone agree to things they wouldn’t want otherwise. It’s a bunch of subtle mind games with that one, and if he weren’t so exasperated with the kid he might be proud.

Pride is a complicated thing when it comes to Paul, and what Jim lacks in giving to him, the boy finds it for himself, confidence burning through his smile.

His cockiness is frightening at times, and he’s seen how cruel school kids can be. Instead of crying over cubby cheeks and thin eyebrows, he lost weight and took on a cheeky demeanor, making it so anything anyone ever said to Paul was what he wanted.

Paul is no longer that fat choir kid who gets pushed around and made fun of, he’s the boy girls fawn over and boys want to be.

Manipulation starts off small, and Paul is already fine-tuning it down to perfection.

So pride isn’t quite there.

Instead, Jim is constantly worried about him, his slicked up hair and the tight trousers, everything he has always preached against. He understands grief processes differently, and that for Paul, music was an escape. So he allowed the records and the obsessive late night playing, hoping it will fade away. That the sweet choir boy from before would return.

That the boy that he and Mary raised would appear, not this thing born from the ashes, taller and meaner, focused on the trivial things.

Had he know what would have come, he might have stopped it. It’s a cruel thought, but Jim never said he was a sweet father. Blame it on the lack of a feminine touch if you will.

Instead, trouble came in the human form, and suddenly Paul is besotted over an older lad, following him around like the boy was a god. School marks go down, and suddenly Paul comes home with dirty shoes, smelling like a pub.

And all he talks about is John. Even when he doesn’t, the other boy is in Paul’s words, the way he phrases things, the music he likes, and curse words that Jim hasn’t heard since he worked at the docks.

Jim is reluctant to think of his son fawning over John Lennon, but he supposes he can’t ignore what he sees. No matter how much he desperately wants to.

Maybe he could in the beginning, before the shared grief and sleepovers, and then leaving to Spain.

Paul coming back home cheeks flushed red and skin a healthy tan, going on about Paris and all the things he did with John. How they stayed in Paris instead, how romantic and gorgeous it all was. How it was John’s birthday, but Paul felt like it was his, sleeping next to his best friend, living off of John’s money and the music in their souls.

Something like love in the way he plays guitar now, always writing in his notebook, and then running off, with flushed cheeks and a pleased smile on his face.

Jim listening with a polite smile, heart clenching dangerously whenever Paul got a bit too open.

He doesn’t want to know, he really doesn’t. And yet.

Something about the way Paul looks at John, enthralled and wide eyes, earnest in a way he never was at church. If Paul had a religion, it was in this, in knocking shoulders with that troublesome boy, and following him into the nasty depths of a world not meant for him. Slicking his hair back and ignoring Mike, turning into this creature that doesn’t quite fit within the molds of the McCartney household. Paul wears this new persona strikingly well, and it was if the grief sodden chubby lad from a year ago never existed.

The Paul of now is taller, smiles more, has a confidence inside him that would be charming if Jim didn’t know the smug edge that lied beneath it.

And then John. God help him, he wants to like the boy, or at least thank him for how happy he has made his son, but doing that would make him admit to things he doesn’t want to see or know.

Like how Paul will show up with hickeys all over his neck, and then Jim will inquire after Dot, amused over young love, and then. Well then Paul will stare at him for a moment, and then let loose some general thing, like I haven’t seen her for a while dad. Or how he’ll come home late at night, giggly and drunk, with John attached to him, both tumbling into his bedroom, with a creaking door and the click of the lock.

Or how John will smile at Paul, knees knocking together, faces close as they work on music. Their music, the way it’s an excuse to get close, how John will sneak into the house late nights, voice not quite carrying its way to Jim’s ear’s. And, Jim will lie in his room wondering how to get these thoughts out of his head.

That his son might be queer, or halfway there. Or even if he wasn’t, something is there, John-shaped in his heart, making them closer than two lads their age should be.

Walking past his son’s bedroom and catching Paul’s quiet whispers, John’s name and a laugh, fonder than it should be.

Hearing John slide through the bathroom window, Paul catching him with a laugh, a quiet down or my dad will hear. A reply, well can’t have the old man knowing the filth you bring in at night. A joke about prostitues, another laugh from them both, and then silence.

Watching John find an excuse to touch Paul, comment on his features. Calls him pretty boy, laughing giddily when Paul flushes red, eyes never leaving each other. The way Paul laughs at every single unfunny thing that hurls out of that Lennon boy’s mouth, how he is a kind lad but if Jim makes a remark about him, he gets upset. 

If Jim called Dot a slag, Paul would get offended for her sake, but he wouldn’t mind it much. But as soon as Jim says John isn’t a very good friend, Paul stops talking to him, cheeks red with anger.

How sometimes Jim thinks that maybe Paul likes John, in that unspoken way that makes his stomach sick, and that John definitely likes Paul, even if it isn’t reciprocated. That maybe they mean something more than Jim could ever understand, and how awful that makes him feel.

But it’s unspeakable, and he can’t stop Paul, so he watches and compartmentalizes everything until it all goes blank.

Watches them in thinly vailed weariness, and ignores the confused yet amused looks Mike shoots him. It doesn’t matter what he does, he has since discovered that if Paul had to choose between him and John, he’d choose John.

It stings, just a bit. But Jim has tried to be a good father, so he stays silent and tries to forget.

If he drinks enough, and puts enough dislike into his words when he speaks of Lennon, it will all go away.

Compartmentalize and forget. 

A crash from upstairs shocks him out of his lingering thoughts, heavy and echoing through the thin floors. It’s followed by low mutters, indistinguishable through the barrier, but loud enough for him to hear. Jim warily sets towards it, apprehension curling around his gut.

It’s a familiar sound, only louder, because whoever is up there thinks no one is home. 

Nasally laughter sounds out, and Jim’s mind goes blank, his hands shaking as they rely on the railing to pull him up the stairs.

His feet slowly pace up the stairs, freezing when Paul laughs, low and fond, only to be broken up by a moan.

For a moment, Jim lets himself believe that Dot is up there with him, and they are up to no good. Jim would still disapprove, but at least Paul would be normal, the boy that he raised. 

He desperately needs it to be Dot, so he can lecture about condoms and pregnancy, and all the stuff father’s are reluctant to think about. He take that over this though, walking in and seeing. Well.

Not this amalgamation of Elvis, a bit of grief, and John seeping into every part of him. 

But some part of Jim, even before another moan is let out, echoing the first, knows he’s wrong. It rings through Jim’s ears, deep and inherently masculine, and Jim desperately wants to be deaf his moment. If he was stupid, or ignorant, this wouldn’t have bothered him. Because he wouldn’t have known.

He should walk away. Should forget this, except it’s already searing it’s way into his brain, and his mouth is opening up foolishly.

“Paul? Are you alright?” He calls out, and his stomach drops at the way everything goes eerily silent. And then he hears a low curse, sharp and scared, and it’s enough to make Jim want to run away, embarrassed and angry, all sorts of wrong.

Someone makes a hushing noise, and Jim’s ears aren’t perfect, but they are good enough to hear the zipping of jeans, the harsh whisper of his son’s name, the near silent way Paul hushes him again.

“Paul it’s okay.” He hears the boy, John, say, and it’s sweet in a way John never is in public, and Jim wishes he could run away, leave them be. But his feet feel stuck, and he already called out, and everything is ruined.

Eventually, a decade longer, the door creaks open, and wide sad looking eyes stare back at him.

Or rather they stare at some point behind Jim, his son too afraid, or embarrassed to look him in the eye.

Before the door curls around the shape of Paul’s shoulders, he sees a flash of auburn hair, the glint of glasses against the low light. He sees his son’s best friend terrified, and isn’t that an awful thing to do.

Paul’s shirt is not his own, wider around the shoulders and a richer fabric, and he wonders if he had gave them more time, if Paul would have still put on John’s shirt. His hair is mussed and there is a strange limp to his step, all things that Jim wishes he didn’t see.

He hears a curse from inside the door, sees the way Paul stands a little taller, the way his eyes want to look back, but how he feels like he can’t.

The scent of cigarettes and sex seeps into the clean hallway air, and it takes everything in Jim not to freak out there.

The only reason he doesn’t is because Paul is flushed a violent red, a bruise barely concealed by the collar of his shirt, and he’s looking near Jim with an expression he’s not used to. Paul is afraid, deadly so, and it’s enough to silence any words Jim might of had.

He stares at his son a moment longer, tries to see past the small crack of the door, but Paul shoulders through, making his way into the hallway instead.

The door clicks closed, and it takes effort to pull his eyes away, knowing that all his suspicions were right. That behind that door, in the small room Paul can barely be contained in, they do…whatever this is.

“Yeah dad?” Paul asks, a smile flickering across his face, but it feels distinctly odd, and Jim wonders when his son got so good at concealing his emotions so quickly.

“Is John with you?” He asks, and Paul tenses slightly, eyes sharpening, and smile pressing firmer into the corner of his lips. How he gets when he’s pissed or sad, or anything other than the happy boy he wants to be seen as.

It will cause him problems, hiding behind this wall of his, but bad habits make bad habits, and Jim never claimed he was perfect.

“No? Why would you think that?” They stare at each other a moment longer, Paul deathly afraid but unwilling to show it, Jim horrified and worried and a bit disgusted, but unwilling to say it.

Men don’t sleep with other men. And yet.

And yet Paul is (maybe) in love with a man, and Jim has never seen Paul laugh the way he does with John. And John is a parentless child (god bless Mimi), who found family in a boy who had everything John never had. They complete each other, and Jim shouldn’t care that it’s queer, or illegal and yet.

Old habits die hard.

“You both are always together.” Jim allows. Saying I heard something but we both won’t admit it, this is all I can say on the matter. Saying that he knows and while he won’t say anything, he wishes Paul wouldn’t. Paul swallows audibly, eyes flickering back to the closed door behind him.

“Yeah he is. We were working on a new piece.” Jim nods, and smiles a bit, swallowing back anything harsh or mean.

His stomach aches a bit from hunger, and he pushes all of this aside for later tonight, when he can think about all the things he knows but shouldn’t, all the things that will go terribly wrong with them both.

Instead, he walks away, looking back at Paul with a eyebrow raised.

“Since both of you are here, why don’t you help me fix a late dinner.” Repress and don’t think about it.

“John?” Paul calls out, and then he says it again, a bit softer, like he’s worried. The door creaks open, and John is standing there, clothes fixed and hair brushed back, and he looks almost normal, except for the way his eyes are narrowed, cheeks flushed with something.

He wants to say it’s embarrassment, but he doesn’t know if John knows how to feel shame, and so he brushes the thought aside, avoiding the keen way the boy stares at him, just as afraid as Paul but willing to fight.

It sparks something sad in his chest, and he manages a tight smile directed somewhere between the two boys staring at him.

“I’ll get the food out, clean up and wash your hands yeah?”

Without a word, they both head to the bathroom, and Jim watches them for a moment, wondering if he’s doing this right.

He makes his way downstairs, ignoring the quiet murmurs that follow him, his heart in his throat.

It’s all so terribly sad, and the worst thing is, Jim doesn’t even mind that Paul is like that. He could handle that, but John included just makes everything messier. He can taste his son’s heartbreak already, and he wonders where his parenting went wrong.

Paul comes downstairs, and there is a mark on his cheek, button shaped and rubbed red. Like Paul had pressed his cheek against his jacket, forgetting how easily his skin can mark up.

John comes down a moment later, leather covering a shirt that isn’t his, and he looks calmer now, eyes distant and wary, but more like the Lennon he knows. 

Jim’s eyes catch the silver button on John’s collar, and his eyes flick back to Paul’s face with a sigh.

He turns away from them both, and prays to a god he hasn’t talked to since Mary died.

Asks how to deal with this, how to keep his son happy.

And then Paul laughs, low and shaky, but there all the same, and he knows how.

It will just take some thinking. But Jim isn’t a quitter, and this won’t be the thing to break him.

He promised to keep his sons safe and happy, and even if John doesn’t keep Paul safe (though he reckons even that is a misconception) he certainly makes his son happy.

**Author's Note:**

> This is like very poor writing skill wise but i live for the idea. This will probably be around three chapters? unless y’all like it like this, then it will stay a one shot. 
> 
> Also uh idk how Jim would react so i’m guessing maybe a bit homophobic but earnest because that’s his son and he wants him to be happy. So disapproval but not enough to stop shit
> 
> Though if you do like this one i have far better works :) check those out and validate me pls


End file.
